Fear Itself
by Sameuspegasus
Summary: There's a monster in a little girl's closet. That can't be too hard to deal with, can it? Post series HP, Season 5 SPN. Angsting. Slightly slashy Dean/Cas friendship.


**Disclaimer: Not for profit. I have no affiliation with Supernatural or Harry Potter.**

It's only a monster in a little girl's closet. Dean can deal with it on his own. He doesn't need to call Sam. He'll just take care of it, and by the time he gets back they'll both have cooled down from their fight that morning. In and out in five minutes. It's nothing.

At least that's what Dean thinks until he opens the closet door. The little girl described a monster with fire in its eyes and pointed teeth longer than her arm, but that isn't what steps out.

For a second, Dean can't move. "Dad?"

Dad is solid. There is no flickering; no sudden chill. There is no smell of sulphur and he doesn't flinch at the name of Christ. It's like he's come back to life and has just been waiting around in a little girl's closet, waiting for Dean to come and set him free.

And then the Dad-thing starts talking. "Why didn't you stop it, Dean? I gave you one job to do and you didn't do it, and now look what's happened. Sam's dead. Bobby's dead. Cas is dead. Hell, I'm dead, too. And now 6 Billion people are going to die. The world is ending and it's all your fault. You've given up. I always knew you were the stupid one, Dean, but I didn't know you were a coward. They should have left you in hell. It's where you belong. Or better yet, you should never have been born. At least then I wouldn't have had to put up with your pathetic, needy ass all those years."

Dean finally collects himself and raises his shot gun. He hesitates. Dad steps towards him. Dean knows he's not real. He can't be. But he's got that look on his face, the hard eyes, and Dean swallows. He remembers that look from Flagstaff, when Sam ran away, and he hates that it can still make him feel worse than worthless. Like he didn't feel like that already. Dean steels himself, summoning up the part of him that hates his father, and forces himself to pull the trigger.

A shot gun shell of rock salt embeds itself in Dad's chest. Dad doesn't even flinch. "All you had to do was save your brother, and you couldn't even do that. You let him say yes to the devil! You useless, irresponsible…"

The bubble of anger that's been floating inside him, threatening to burst for years slips to the surface, and Dean yells. "Irresponsible? You're calling me irresponsible? After what you put on us? After how you abandoned us?"

He can see Dad's muscles tensing, his hand coming up, but he can't seem to stop yelling. He's still venting his anger, somewhat incoherently, when Dad backhands him across the face hard enough to knock him to the ground. He loses the shotgun, and suddenly, with Dad standing over him he can't yell anymore. He's afraid. And embarrassed. But mostly he just knows Dad is right. He has screwed up. It's all his fault.

But then he remembers that Dad's not right. Sam's not dead. He hasn't said yes. Dean ignores the little voice that says _yet_, and reminds himself that Cas isn't dead. Bobby's not dead. They might be running out of time, but the big prize fight hasn't happened yet. The Dad-thing is making things up.

Dean scrambles up from the floor and stabs his father with his silver blade. It gives him a strange mix of satisfaction and horrible, horrible guilt, even though he knows the thing is not really his father. It doesn't seem to hurt, but it distracts him for a moment. Dean stabs and thrusts with the knife and somehow manages to drive the thing back into the closet and lock the door. He shoves Stephanie Ward's toy chest in front of the door and stands there shaking for a moment, trying to recover his breathing.

Dad bangs on the door of the closet, his muffled voice telling Dean he'd never loved him.

Dean leaves the room and takes his phone out when the door is safely shut behind him. He calls Mrs Ward, telling her to keep Stephanie at her Grandma's for another night. He calls Sam and Cas, but doesn't tell them about Dad. He needs their help, but he's not sure he wants them to hear what Dad thinks of him.

Cas arrives first. Of course he does, he can fly. Sam has to drive from the library. Dean hates to say it, but he's kind of relieved. If someone has to hear Dean's father yelling at him, he doesn't want it to be Sam. Dean's kind of hoping Cas can get his angel on and destroy it before Sam even has to go near it.

The thumping has stopped when Dean and Cas open the door to Stephanie's bedroom. Dean's not sure whether to be relieved or worried. He readies his knife as Cas prepares to open the closet door.

"One… two… three!" Dean counts, and Cas opens the door with a sudden, sharp tug.

Dean watches his own lifeless body tumble out and fall in a heap at Castiel's feet.

Cas is frozen, staring at Dean's body on the pink carpet. Dean is frozen too. The body is fresh but pale, the eyes wide and staring. There's a stab wound in its chest, and the blood isn't quite dry. It's wearing the same outfit as Dean.

"Dean?" Cas says, in a strange, wobbly tone that Dean has never heard him use before. "Dean, wake up." He kneels beside the dead Dean, fingers reaching for a pulse in the neck. "I can't heal you, Dean. We have to go. That wound is from the blade of an angel." His hands move from the dead Dean's neck to cover the wound, hovering like he's trying to heal it. He rips open the body's sleeve, baring its shoulder. There is a vivid handprint on it.

"Cas?" Dean says. "That's not me." He's only just recovered his voice.

Cas looks at him, and down at his body, and back at him. He stands up, and suddenly there's an angel blade in his hand. "Prove it," he says, glaring at Dean.

"Uh…" Dean says.

Cas is stalking towards him. He looks a little crazy. "Let me touch your soul," he says.

Dean is saved from replying by a sudden flying tackle from behind. He hits the floor hard enough to bruise, even with the plushy pink carpet cushioning his fall. He struggles to roll over. There is something extremely heavy on him.

It turns out to be Sam, silver knife in hand. "What did you do to him, you shape-shifting bastard?" Sam growls, in that voice of intense fury that sometimes makes Dean worry if all that demon blood really did do something to his brother.

"I am your brother," Dean wheezes, "Look, cut me with… Oh crap." Through the gap beneath Sam's arm, Dean catches a glimpse of the spot where his body had been. It's not there anymore. There's someone in its place.

"Hello, Sam," says Lucifer silkily, clambering to his feet. "I'm so glad you finally agreed to my proposition. I think we'll be very happy together."

Sam rolls off Dean and they both slowly stand up

"He's not real, Sammy," Dean says, but it's a little uncertain. Maybe it's been Lucifer playing mind games all along.

"Oh, I'm very real," Lucifer smirks at them. "Come on, Sammy. Just a few last minute preparations."

Dean tugs on the back of his brother's t-shirt, slowly backing them both towards the door. He sneaks a glance at Cas, and to his surprise finds the angel looking at him rather than Lucifer. Dean beckons toward the door with his head and Cas nods slightly. He inches in Dean's direction.

Lucifer moulds his face into a hurt expression. "Leaving so soon? But the fun has just begun."

He is just about to click his fingers when the door bursts open again, and suddenly Lucifer is gone, replaced by a pile of corpses and a snake-faced man in a black robe. The man is laughing, high pitched and crazy, and screaming in an ecstatic voice: "You lose, Potter! They're all dead, and for what?"

But then man in the doorway says something that sounds to Dean like "ridiculous", and the crazy man is suddenly wearing a pink dress with flounces, and all the corpses are coming back to life. They're clambering to their feet. First the red-haired woman, then the children, the tall red-haired man, and then the woman with the bushy brown hair, all one after the other. They start performing some kind of synchronised dance routine. There is a laugh from the doorway.

People disappear in a puff of smoke. Dean glances at Cas to see if he knows what just happened. Cas knows a lot of things, but he looks just as perplexed as Dean feels. So does Sam.

"Hello," says the man in the doorway.

Dean turns to look at him. He is small and wiry, with wild hair and glasses. He's holding a stick.

"What was that?" Sam asks.

XXX

The guy turns out to be okay. He doesn't even take too much offense when Dean threatens to gank him upon finding out he's a wizard. Says he got that reaction a lot when he was a kid, and swears on his honour that he's never killed a rabbit. His name's Harry and he hunts dark wizards. He suggests they go somewhere else to talk about it, so the Wards can come back to the house.

Dean is still suspicious of him, so they take him back to their motel, where they've rolled the rug with the devil's trap on the underside out in the doorway. There's all kinds of warding all over the room, but Harry passes through it without incident, and happily knocks back the holy water Dean gives him.

"That was a boggart," Harry tells them, when all the preliminaries are out of the way. "It takes the form of a person's deepest fear.

Dean makes his mind up not to tell Sam that his greatest fear was not just being unable to stop the world ending, but that his father would then come back from the dead and yell at him for it.

He glances across at Cas. "Huh." Cas doesn't meet his eyes.

Sam is asking: "So, what, it reads minds? And that's the only thing that can stop it? You have to be a wizard? How did you know where it was?"

Harry is explaining that Mrs Ward is something called a squib and was a relative of a friend of his and had called in magical help to get rid of the thing. Harry had been in the area with a few of his co-workers (he doesn't say why – Dean takes that as a bad sign). When Dean had volunteered his help, she must have assumed he'd been sent by Harry. Dean loses interest somewhat and goes to sit by Cas on his bed.

Cas is sitting stiffly on the edge of the worn brown bedspread. "Your father was probably just a mouthpiece. Your fear was on too large a scale to be shown easily."

Dean settles himself more comfortably. "That's not what I was going to ask."

Cas still won't look at him.

"I kind of thought your fear would be more along the lines of God turning out to be a douchebag."

Cas is still staring determinedly at the wall. Dean is surprised there isn't a hole in it. "Well, it's not."

"It's okay, Cas." Dean says awkwardly. "I… er… worry about you too."

Cas finally looks at him and nods. They sit silently on the edge of the bed.

On the other side of the room, Sam asks Harry: "Can I see your wand?"

"Want to go to the park?" Dean asks Cas.

Cas smiles slightly. "Let's go."

The End.


End file.
